The Northwest Territories took a giant step closer to gaining unprecedented control over its own land, water and natural resources on Monday, but without support from two of the territory’s aboriginal governments.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced in Yellowknife that negotiators have reached consensus on the terms of a final devolution agreement. Devolution is the transfer of province-like powers to the territories from Ottawa.

“The heavy lifting is done,” Harper said. “It is time for the people of the Northwest Territories to take control of its destiny.”

The agreement, which will see the N.W.T. keep a large chunk of revenue from resource development that currently flows to the federal government, comes after more than a decade of negotiations. Harper hailed Monday as “historic for the people of the Northwest Territories and for all Canadians.”

The territory’s GDP is expected to double by 2020 as a result of lucrative resource extraction projects.

But two of the territory’s seven aboriginal governments haven’t signed on to the agreement, partly due to concerns that unsettled land claims will be affected.

N.W.T. Premier Bob McLeod told Postmedia News after the announcement that he’s optimistic the remaining two aboriginal groups will sign on to the agreement.

He said he thinks Dehcho First Nation will sign on “if we can make some progress on some land issues,” and the Akaitcho Territory Government is interested in sitting down to meet “in the very near future.”

I think that would be a tremendous and major achievement

“If we ever get to the point where we get all seven aboriginal governments signed on, I think that would be a tremendous and major achievement,” McLeod said.

Critics have expressed concern that the agreement will erode aboriginal governments’ decision-making powers.

“We’d like a government that is responsive, that is collaborative, that is positive in supporting the aspirations of First Nations,” said Stephen Kakfwi, who was premier of the Northwest Territories from 2000 until 2004. “This government hasn’t really been doing that.”

Kakfwi criticized the government’s record on conservation issues and said there hasn’t been adequate consultation on the terms of the devolution agreement.

“The general public has not been included,” he said. “Everybody else is asked to take a leap of faith. I think we’re prepared to do that, but there has to be a serious attitude adjustment in the approach this government has taken to date,” he said.

Harper vowed on Monday that the government will fulfill its duty to consult with all impacted aboriginal groups before the final agreement is signed. The territory has agreed to share part of the revenues resulting from devolution with participating aboriginal governments. About 50 per cent of N.W.T.’s population is aboriginal.

McLeod said devolution means the territory’s natural wealth can now be used directly for the benefit of its people.

The government will now conduct public engagement on the deal and consult with aboriginal governments, but McLeod said he doesn’t see a lot of potential for movement on the terms of the final agreement, “unless there’s a major error, or unless there was something that we missed.” The government has been consulting with the public for 12 years on the issue, he said.

McLeod expects the legislative assembly to vote on the agreement in late May or early June.

It should at least be cause for trepidation

The agreement also raises concerns that Canada ceding powers to the territory will leave its government ill-equipped to handle the influx of resource extraction projects sure to come.

“It is not clear that their institutional structures are going to have the capacity to deal with the massive influx of proposals,” said William Amos, director of the Ecojustice Environmental Law Clinic at the University of Ottawa. “It should at least be cause for trepidation.”

Amos said devolution could represent a “foundational shift” in approach to economic development. A 2011 agreement-in-principle called for negotiations about offshore drilling – not covered this time around – to begin soon after the current agreement is finalized.

“There is every reason to be concerned that the pace and scope of projects being proposed is going to greatly exceed our capacity—not only northerners’ capacity, but Canada’s capacity—to develop sustainably,” Amos said.

McLeod said he doesn’t see the logic of concerns about environmental oversight.

“If anything, we’ll be paying more attention because we’re a smaller jurisdiction,” he said.

Stephanie Irlbacher-Fox, a University of Alberta adjunct professor and governance consultant based in Yellowknife who worked as an adviser to an aboriginal group during devolution negotiations, said rather than constitutional reform which would see aboriginal governments and the territorial government at the same table, this devolution agreement will help centralize decision-making power in Yellowknife. That will lead to a series of one-off resource management, decision-making and consultation forums, she said.

She said she agrees with devolution conceptually, but it comes with a cost. This agreement, along with other measures, will create a “fragmented, very costly, time-consuming, unstable approach to governance in the Northwest Territories,” she said.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper will travel to Yellowknife Monday to mark the end of talks granting province-like powers to the Northwest Territories.

Harper’s office confirmed Sunday that he will be present at the event, to be held at the territorial legislature.

The deal, which has been a top agenda item for territorial premiers stretching back two decades, will put control over northern resources in the hands of northerners for the first time. It will also give them a big chunk of the royalties those resources produce, money that will also be shared with the N.W.T.’s aboriginal governments

But Harper and N.W.T. Premier Bob McLeod won’t be signing its final version. Monday’s text is only the final draft reached by negotiators.

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“The public will have unprecedented opportunities to have public engagement on this deal,” McLeod promised the territorial legislature last week.

McLeod has also promised MLAs will have a voice on the deal. Backbench members of the legislature, who function as a kind of opposition in the N.W.T.’s non-party system of consensus government, have complained that the talks have been consistently conducted behind closed doors.

“It’s been 40 years and the public has had very little participation,” MLA Bob Bromley complained in the legislature on Thursday.

It’s not clear how much scope northerners and their elected representatives will have to affect any changes in the text to be signed Monday. Nor is it clear how those consultations will be carried out, or how the legislature will be involved.

It’s been 40 years and the public has had very little participation

Steve Kakfwi, a conservation advocate and former territorial premier, said he’s concerned the agreement may not have strong enough measures for local people to protect areas that are important to them _ especially after the Harper government rolled regional regulatory boards into one central body.

“It’s the (territorial) officials that are the least supportive of what the First Nations are trying to achieve,” he said.

Devolution is expected to come into force on April 1, 2014.

Under the agreement in principle, the N.W.T. would keep half its resource royalties without losing federal transfers, up to a total of five per cent of its total budget expenditures.

The territory is expected to reap about $65 million a year from those royalties. About 18 per cent of that will be transferred to the five aboriginal governments who have signed on.

The deal also transfers control over those royalties to Yellowknife from the federal government.

The feds will send another $65 million to the territory to compensate it for the cost of those responsibilities, including the salaries of federal bureaucrats who will now work for the N.W.T.

The agreement was originally reached in October 2010. When then-premier Floyd Roland and then Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Minister John Duncan signed it about four months later, only three of the N.W.T.’s seven major aboriginal groups supported it.

The federal government is on the cusp of ceding control over land, water and resource revenues to the Northwest Territories, a move that would render the territory a de facto province.

N.W.T. Premier Bob McLeod and his cabinet met with Prime Minister Stephen Harper and other government officials Wednesday to work out the details of an agreement.

The agreement, which Mr. McLeod told CTV on Wednesday is “very close” to completion, will transfer responsibility for managing public land, water and resources to the territory from the federal government by 2014.

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That means tens of millions of dollars in royalties and other resource revenues that now go to the federal government will stay in territorial coffers. Those revenues are projected to increase as the territory’s mining sector expands, with its GDP expected to double by 2020.

“Concluding an agreement with N.W.T. will be an important and positive step in the evolution of Northern governance and will deliver economic benefits to the territory,” said Jason MacDonald, a spokesman for Aboriginal Affairs Minister John Duncan. He declined to give specifics of the negotiations.

The pending devolution agreement comes after more than 11 years of negotiations, which included a 2011 agreement-in-principle between the territory and the federal government.

The agreement-in-principle called for $26-million from the federal government in one-time transition costs, as well as annual funding for the delivery of land, water and resource management programs ($65-million in the first year). It also called for a net fiscal benefit consistent with the equalization program for provinces. In 2012, that amount would have been $65-million.

According to Northwest Territories Premier Bob McLeod — who, along with his cabinet, deputy ministers and a contingent of First Nations and business leaders, is in Ottawa for negotiations with the federal government — the N.W.T. is “on the verge of achieving” a historic agreement to gain control over its natural resources. If such an agreement is reached, it would be a significant marker in the long battle between Western Canadians and the federal government.

Of all the geographical divisions that make up this country, the Northwest Territories has been the most tortured. Historically used as a catch-all for large swaths of land Ottawa had no idea what to do with, the territory originally encompassed parts of modern-day British Columbia, the Yukon, Nunavut, Saskatchewan and Alberta.

When Ottawa purchased Rupert’s Land from the Hudson’s Bay Co. (HBC) in 1870, the territory grew immensely, but would slowly be whittled down as time went on: Manitoba and B.C. would expand north, the Yukon was created in 1898, Alberta and Saskatchewan were carved out in 1905 and Nunavut was created in 1999.

If one thing has remained fairly constant throughout these expansions and contractions, it’s the fight of Western Canadians — including Northwest Territorians — to control their own resources.

Shortly after consuming much of HBC’s North American holdings, Frederick Haultain, the premier of what was known as the North-West Territories, would come to embody that struggle. At the time of his election in 1888, the Legislative Assembly had control only over monies raised within the territory, which constituted a mere 10% of its budget. The rest of the money came in the form of grants from the feds and were controlled by the lieutenant-governor.

Without the ability to control finances, the elected members could not be held accountable for the government’s actions — a fundamental tenant of our system of responsible government. Without control over resource revenues, the fledgling territory could not hope to raise the money needed to fund its own initiatives.

It’s the same basic problems that First Nations have to deal with, in other words, writ large.

Although Mr. Haultain eventually would be successful in bringing responsible government to Western Canada, his dream of resource control could not overcome the ambitions of Liberal and Conservative prime ministers alike. Ottawa needed control over Western resources to encourage immigration into the region. But while giving away free homesteads proved very enticing to European settlers, it also put a strain on the provinces and territories responsible for providing roads, schools and other services to the new residents.

The Yukon signed an oil and gas accord with Ottawa in 1993, and an agreement dealing with other natural resources in 2003. Both agreements were amended last year, giving the Yukon control over capped resource-revenue streams. Whether the Northwest Territories comes to a similar agreement, or gains full control over resources, as the provinces now have, remains to be seen.

According to statements made by Premier McLeod and Aboriginal and Northern Affairs Minister John Duncan’s office, however, it appears as though the federal government is ready to devolve significant powers to the territorial government — a move that would set a precedent for the two other territories.

This battle for control of northern resources may seem obscure to most Canadians, yet it is part of an important Canadian narrative. The debate over central versus local control dates back to Confederation, with Westerners in particular agitating to wrest more power away from central planners in Ottawa. As Aritha van Herk wrote in her 2001 book, Mavericks: An Incorrigible History of Alberta, the federal government has often treated the regions “as if they are slightly malfunctioning limbs attached to the country’s torso.”

It would be surprising if the federal Conservatives gave up control over vast untapped oil reserves and a multi-million-dollar mining industry in the Northwest Territories. Yet such a move would strengthen Canadian federalism by giving Northern peoples a greater degree of control over their economies, something for which they have long been waiting.